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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418568">Mythos</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account'>orphan_account</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Soul Eater</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/M, Gen, Introspection, Mythology - Freeform, References to Ancient Greek Religion &amp; Lore, References to Frankenstein, Stream of Consciousness</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-30</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:27:01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,272</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28418568</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>A maddened Professor Stein sits alone in his laboratory, ruminating upon the exact nature of his relationship with Medusa.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Medusa Gorgon/Franken Stein</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Mythos</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>It started and ended with a myth.</p><p>Certain facets of Greek mythology had always fascinated him, as a scientist. The Greek legends were only an attempt to understand natural phenomena through personification, after all. The interaction between love and soul was personified by the immortal relationship between <em>Eros</em> and <em>Psyche</em>. The recurrence of springtime as explained by the relationship of <em>Persephone</em>, the God of Spring, to <em>Hades</em>, the God of the Dead.</p><p>It made a certain sense that these early ideas of science and understanding would appeal to the academic in him.</p><p>There was one name which stood out to him, now.</p><p>The Grecian Priestess, <em>Medusa Gorgon</em>. He vaguely remembered reading the actual tale in some form when he had been a child. Until recent events had forced otherwise, it had sat at the back of his mind, collecting dust.</p><p>The story went like this:</p><p>Medusa had been a young and chaste woman, renowned, as women were in ancient times, for her beauty and purity. She swore an oath to <em>Athena</em> that she would remain a virgin untouched by any man. Her tragedy, if you could call it that, was that she had fallen for the philandering <em>Poseidon</em>, God of the ocean, and had broken her vows. <em>Athena</em> had been so furious that Medusa had broken her vow of celibacy that she sentenced the poor Gorgon sister to live the rest of her life as a villain. And, as the legend says, she was cursed to turn the body of anyone who gazed at her immediately into stone; her golden hair replaced by a slew of snakes.</p><p>Wasn't that always the way, in mythology? Total innocence, precluding one forbidden act. Perfection, except one crucial shortcoming. There wasn't any room for second chances, or so it seemed.</p><p>It seemed laughably unfair.</p><p>The Medusa from the Greek legend had only been guilty of one simple sin.</p><p><em>Lust</em>.</p><p>Acting upon her supposed lust, she had begun an affair which cost her everything she once owned.</p><p>And how was <em>Poseidon</em> punished for the infidelity? He hadn't been, of course. He had continued his philandering ways, along with the rest of the male Gods of Olympus.</p><p><em>Lust</em>. The most animalistic; basic sin of them all.</p><p>The Professor stares in the mirror and hums to himself.</p><p>Or was that <em>Wrath</em>, he wondered.</p><p>He supposed it depended on the person.</p><p>His eyes traced down his own figure in the poorly lit mirror, observing himself. The mirror was full of cracks, but it didn't much matter to him. He was just as cracked, he understood that. His coat had been pieced together in terrible seams, his skin stitched up with big, ugly sutures. His mind was held together by a giant metal cog, inserted agonisingly through his skull.</p><p>He wasn't particularly lustful, not on a good day. How could he be? He was a man of science; of evidence; of rationality. Silly animalistic desires were beneath him.</p><p>Medusa hardly seemed lustful to him, either; at least not the Medusa he was acquainted with.</p><p>She certainly <em>inspired</em> lust in others - those golden locks, twisting to form an intricate pendant round her neck. It was like a pendulum clock, inviting the watcher to lower their gaze down to her body, usually clad in some tight black suit. Tattoos all the while twining round her arms, a hooded figure with a menacing golden smirk.</p><p>Any man in his right mind would be lustful, in her presence. And yet... it was <em>him</em> that she seemed to have set her sights on – circling him all the time, watching him, running those golden eyes up and down his body. Her lips dripped honey laced with venom into his ears, piecing away at a chink in his mental armour without even laying a finger upon him.</p><p>She had come to him - told him she needed him. That she <em>saw</em> him. What he <em>really</em> was, what he <em>really</em> wanted and what he was capable of becoming, if he took the opportunity that she was handing him on a silver platter. She knew - <em>instinctively</em> - which buttons to press, and in which order to press them. She knew how to twist his troubled mind up in precisely the right way; make him crazy; make him malleable to her whims.</p><p>It lit a fire inside him; his eyes bubbling with something which resembled molten desire - even toward this woman whom he <em>knew</em> to be manipulating him.</p><p>And yet... he saw nothing but hate staring back at him.</p><p>Destruction. Chaos. Malcontent.</p><p>The Medusa Gorgon he knew had slaughtered hundreds of innocent people. She had raised her child as a slave and then abandoned them. She had terrorised an entire city - adults and children alike. Any hint that his Medusa might have felt <em>something</em> for anyone, ever in her life... was pure fallacy.</p><p>To suggest that she was filled with anything other than unbridled loathing… well, that was the real myth.</p><hr/><p>And what about <em>him</em>?</p><p>What cardinal sin was he guilty of?</p><p>The myth behind his character was a rather more modern story, one of obsession and science and perfection and madness.</p><p>A scientist, Victor Frankenstein, was said to be consumed by the desire to understand more about life and death. But he didn't just want to understand it though, no. He wanted to become it. He wanted to be a creator of life, and over time became obsessed with the pursuit of his art. He locked himself away in his basement for days on end, stitching skin and parts together - creating the exact chemical cocktail to make his foul creation.</p><p>His monster. His perfect beast.</p><p>But it wasn't, was it? That's how the story goes. The creation became something else entirely; a hideous polyp filled with resentment at having been created in the first place. If Victor Frankenstein was some sort of terrible God, then his monster was the human race – flawed, alone and miserable.</p><p>The real crux of the story came, though, when the Monster became lonely. He forced Frankenstein to create another Monster, a female mate for himself. Victor Frankenstein was abjectly horrified at the suggestion, and initially refused. But eventually, he had changed his mind. Presumably he had been feeling guilty over having created a monster which was, by nature of its very existence, all alone in the universe.</p><p>Then, he changed his mind again, and dumped the female monster into the bottom of a lake, drowning her.</p><p>Was her the right pronoun? <em>No</em>, Stein thought. <em>Not her. It.</em></p><p>He had realised, rightly, that the union of the two monsters had the potential to create a whole new species - once which might overthrow the human race.</p><p>Upon discovering that his mate has been killed, the first monster, now even more alone than ever, resolved to end its own life. He would rather die than live in a world in which it had no place.</p><p>By the end of the story, the troubled Victor Frankenstein had found some redemption. He had allowed both of his creations to die for the good of the human race; despite his own obsession with life.</p><p>Stein pondered the story for a few minutes. Absently, he reached forward and twisted the left tap, running the cold and dirty water under his hands for a few seconds. Then, he turned off the faucet and splashed some of the wetness from his cold hands over his face.</p><p>His reflection stared back at him, mocking him.</p><p>He was, in many ways, quite different to the fabled doctor. He personally wasn't obsessed with creation; that wasn't his shtick. Exploration, more like. Discovery. Understanding. <em>Dissection</em>.</p><p>So… what was <em>his</em> fatal flaw, then?</p><p>He almost chuckled at the question forming in his mind. He knew the answer too well, and yet understood it even less.</p><p>
  <em>Madness.</em>
</p><p>Stein's closely held opinion held that madness was all too human - a catch-all term for all those things in life which were yet to be understood. Magic and madness, those were everything for which science didn't yet have any explanation. Before there were any definition in the dictionary for 'schizophrenia', people who heard voices or saw things in the shadows were called mad. Or people who had experienced war; death; trauma – and had subsequently forgotten how to cope in life. They, too, were dismissed as having 'gone mad'.</p><p>So what was <em>madness, </em>to him?</p><p>It was something else. It was something dark and chaotic which resided in him; an obsessive need to understand and see everything in the world, to experiment in every possible way and leave no stone unturned. It was the very thing which had led him to perform illicit experiments on Spirit at night, in their younger days.</p><p>Madness was the reason that Medusa so hated the world, hated <em>humanity</em>; everything.</p><p>It was the same madness which caused Stein's rejection of humanity, of normality. Most days he skirted somewhere between dislike and tolerance of society at large, but there was always that lingering obsession in the back of his mind. The need to <em>dissect</em>.</p><p>He supposed that he should be grateful for it. After all, madness was the only reason that a place like Shibusen was even allowed to exist in the first place. Because some meisters, driven by pure insanity, consumed their weapons and turned into kishin.</p><p>Madness was the reason that Asura – the strongest villain that the world had ever seen – had been defeated by the very concept of his own fear.</p><p>Stein sighed at his reflection and stepped away from the cracked piece of furniture. His naked feet slap coldly against the metal floor, resonating with a jarring sound throughout the lab as he made his way back to the desk. His eyes darted nervously to the clock – he already knew that it was the dead of night, but habit always made him check.</p><p>He couldn't sleep. He hadn't been able to, not for weeks. Not since Medusa began twisting around neurons in his mind; turning that big gear stuck into his brain. He couldn't sleep when his mind was stuck in this civil war. His humanity, wrestling for control with his inhumanity. And even though his humanity was currently winning… he knew that it wouldn't be long until the tides turned.</p><p>But... didn't part of him <em>enjoy</em> this?</p><p>He was a man with many theories, but he was left without any explanation for why, when Medusa played her silly little games with him, part of him <em>wanted</em> it. It was his most deep and covert desire, for her to wrap him up in her schemes; to use him like her puppet. He wanted her to twist his mind until he was twisted himself; until he had succumbed, utterly, to insanity.</p><p>Therein lay his own madness.</p><p>Chaos was so inviting. So very tempting that it was practically an object of lust for him.</p><p>Medusa, for all her wrath and hatred; was a harbinger of chaos. She knew exactly how to unlock it. And he was letting her – little by little, he was letting her. Every time he went down to the dungeons to speak to her, she harnessed herself further in his mind.</p><p>When he couldn't sleep, it was <em>her</em> that plagued his every thought. Her intoxicating scent, musky and dark and a little scary. Her pale, witchlike skin pressed up against him; playing with him – his body and his mind; unravelling parts of him and stitching other parts of him back up.</p><p>So why?</p><p>The fabled <em>Medusa Gorgon</em>, who had been cursed to villainy for nothing but breaking a simple vow, who had been fated to spend the rest of eternity suffering. Stein wondered if perhaps such a fate had turned her bitter and resentful? Perhaps she now sought revenge on the same careless breed of men who had such a disregard for humanity that Poseidon had shown her, all those eons ago. Maybe that was why she had picked him for the pawn in her twisted plot.</p><p>Perhaps, Stein thought as he twists the cog in his head pensively, leaning back in his desk chair and staring up at the yellow lights on the ceiling.</p><p>But why then, when he saw Medusa, did he feel as if <em>she</em> was the creator and him; the creation?</p><p>Perhaps the mythos had gotten things the wrong way round.</p><p>After all, in Medusa Gorgon's myth, the real villain of the story was <em>Poseidon</em>. Medusa had been nothing but an unassuming victim of the vengeful and manipulative Gods. Just a mortal woman, who showed one small flaw, and who would forever feel the crushing weight of punishment for a crime which was not her fault.</p><p>He reached up to his face, lighting the cigarette dangling latently in his lips and inhaling. His hands tangled through his grey hair as he further and further back in his chair.</p><p>In Frankenstein's story, he thought, the <em>real</em> villain was the scientist - not Frankenstein's monster. The monster had been merely a victim of circumstance.</p><p>Whenever the damned witch was near him, she fiddled with the intricate workings of his mind with cautious precision. She pulled at his insecurities; his fears; his dreams and his goals. She plucked each one out of him and plaited them meticulously into exactly what they needed to be, making him the willing puppet – and her, the calculated puppet-master.</p><p>Perhaps it was a twisted form of experimentation for her to see how far she could push before he inevitably fell off the cliff into total insanity. Testing the limits of his durability, his very matter. Working and shaping him, through careful trial and error, into the perfect weapon.</p><p>He was Medusa's monster.</p>
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